Big Tobacco will spend $40 million this spring to convince Californians that Proposition 29's $1 per pack tax increase on cigarettes is a fiscal fiasco. Even some objective analysts are quibbling about how the money might be spent.

Here's our view. If you took all the money from this tax, raked it into a big pile and set fire to it, Proposition 29 would still be a great deal. Raising tobacco taxes reduces smoking, and that will save California taxpayers billions of dollars in medical costs, not to mention sparing millions of people the misery of addiction or of watching loved ones destroy their health.

Spending Propositon 29 tax dollars wisely is important, but it's not the most important thing. Based on solid data from other tobacco tax increases, adding $1 to the per-pack tax in California would cause 118,000 adults to quit smoking and, perhaps more important, would prevent 228,000 young Californians from becoming addicts.

The state's current tobacco tax is just 87 cents a pack, far below the national average of $1.46 -- and even if Prop. 29 passes, California still would have the 25th highest tax in the nation. So why hasn't the Legislature raised the tax? Oh, it has tried. And tried. And tried -- 33 times in the past 30 years. It succeeded only once, in 1993, adding a paltry 2 cents a pack for breast cancer research.

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The Legislature's paralysis is a tribute to the lobbying power of Big Tobacco, which spends about $10 million a year courting California lawmakers. So it is up to voters.

The initiative would raise an estimated $800 million in its first year and $700 million in subsequent years as smoking declines. An agency modeled after the National Institutes of Health -- more credible than California's controversial stem cell agency -- would distribute 60 percent of the funds toward research on cancer and other tobacco-related diseases. Twenty percent would go to prevention and cessation programs; 15 percent to support research facilities and purchase equipment; 3 percent to law enforcement to prevent smuggling and sales to minors; and 2 percent for administration of all this, a very reasonable amount.

Critics complain that some of the research money may go out of state. It's possible, but California's major cancer research centers, including Stanford and the University of California at San Francisco, will be highly competitive. Others argue that if the state is going to raise that kind of money, it should go to the general fund to pay for education, but politically, that's a non-starter. It's also poor policy to ask smokers alone to bankroll the schools. Asking them to help pay the public costs of their habit is entirely fair.

Big Tobacco's ads against Proposition 29 would have you believe doctors are against it. That's a hoot. Dr. James T. Hay, president of the 35,000-member California Medical Association, says: "Doctors are dedicated to keeping people healthy and saving lives. Tobacco companies and their products aren't. Don't be fooled.''

A new federal study released just last week showed that when the large federal tobacco tax was implemented in 2009, it cut the number of youth smokers by more than 220,000 in the first two months alone. How could doctors not support Proposition 29? How could voters?

Proposition 29 will reduce smoking and save lives. The money from the tax will be gravy. Vote yes.